Good way to buy English language books?

[SinPulgas]

I have a kobo, cheaper and simpler digital book than a kindle. There are tons of free downloadable books online, many placesto buy a digital copy of any book you want, and many US libraries let you download if you have a US address you can use to join the library. Typical yearly fee for out of district library caeds are around $40 a year.

Have you seen the price of kobos here lately?

 

[SinPulgas]

Good if you like reading online. I like the real thing. Kel has always been an excellent resource.

What I love about Kindle is, among other things, that you can touch a word and it will pop up the dictionary definition for English or the meaning for Spanish (can be configured).

I resisted it for a long time with that "I like the real thing" idea, until I actually had one and used it. It's fantastic.

You can carry it around in your pocket with hundreds of books stored on it. Reading for any mood. And you can send web pages to it so you can read them comfortably anywhere. It's great for learning Spanish and learning about Argentina, because you can send newspaper articles to it to read when you're out, and, as noted above, touch words you're unsure of to get the meaning instantly, which makes you much more likely to look up words and build your vocabulary. Battery lasts for weeks or months depending on usage.

It's one of the few things I splurged on here in Argentina, since I was cured of the American "mindless consumerism" bug. It was well worth it.

 

[Ries]

Kobos are indeed ridiculously expensive here- in the US, the cheap one is $108. Here, they only have more expensive ones, which are double or triple US prices. I see them on mercado libre for $500 to $1000 US.
In the US, Kindles start at $100 as well, but many are more like $300.
Basically, Kobos and Kindles are the same price for the same features up north. Luckily for me, they last years, I had one last 4 years til I sat on it, and my current one is 2 years or so old and still holds a charge for a week or two of serious reading- 4 to 6 novels, easily.

I read a lot, and often in the dark, so the ability to have 15 or 20 digital books on a reader, and read without waking up significant others is great.
I dislike the proprietary software aspects of Kindle, which only allow Kindle books in many applications. My Kobo will read any epub or pdf, which means that the many sites which have free downloads are accessible.
I dont use dictionary apps, or translation, for books. I read magazines and newspapers online, not from stored files, so I can easily translate with chrome, on the big screen of my monitor.
But for books, I often read 50 to 100 a year, and just dont want the physical objects stacking up, especially for genre fiction, biographies, or other "fast food" type books. I buy real books, but, especially in Argentina, they are usually art and architecture, the types of books where illustrations and size are important. For the latest Jack Reacher, or Sly Stone's Memoir, an epub is just right.